Rate My Professor Marco Yáñez

Marco Yáñez is an assistant professor of silviculture and forest ecology in the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, specializing within Agricultural and Veterinary Science. He joined the faculty on August 1, 2023, and began teaching in January 2024 while conducting research through the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station. His research specializations include adaptive silviculture in the context of climate change for both plantations and mixed forests, forest restoration, clonal silviculture, genotype by environment interactions, and forest ecophysiology. Drawing from observations of Chile’s megadrought since 2010, which dried up lakes and reduced wildlife populations, Yáñez focuses on climate extremes' effects on forests. This aligns with Arkansas’s economy, where forestry covers more than half the state, and UAM is the state’s sole forestry school.

A Chilean native, Marco Yáñez earned a B.S. in Forest Engineering from the University of Talca and a Ph.D. in Forestry from Virginia Tech in 2014. Following his doctorate, he fulfilled a government scholarship by serving as a research scientist at the University of Concepción, University of Talca, and University of Chile, concentrating on forest health, genetic selection, plantation silviculture, and ecological restoration in Mediterranean climates. At the University of Talca, he taught fundamentals of quantitative genetics, forest measuration, plantation silviculture, and forest ecophysiology. At UAM, his expertise supports ongoing initiatives at the Arkansas Forest Resources Center, integrating research into teaching as noted by Dean Mike Blazier. Yáñez has 68 publications with 432 citations. Major works include “Harnessing loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) for sustainable biofuels and bioenergy: A review of biomass feedstock potential, conversion technologies, and forest management in the U.S.” (2025), “Growth and Economic Performance Comparison of Twenty-Year-Old Open-Pollinated vs. Clonal Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda L.) Genotypes in Louisiana, USA” (2025), “Long-term stand growth and survival of loblolly pine open-pollinated families and clonal varieties in the West Gulf Coastal Plain” (2026), “Vulnerability of Bottomland Red Oaks to Climate Variation in Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley” (2025), and “Seasonal Dynamics of Chlorophyll Fluorescence in the Evergreen Peumus boldus and the Semideciduous Colliguaja odorifera Under Field Conditions” (2026).